ead of wild tiger-skins, and had a jerky,
inattentive manner and a high pitched voice. Yet to Miss Mapp's mind
there was something behind his unimpressiveness that had a mysterious
quality--all the more so, because nothing of it appeared on the surface.
Nobody could call Major Flint, with his bawlings and his sniffings, the
least mysterious. He laid all his loud cards on the table, great hulking
kings and aces. But Miss Mapp felt far from sure that Captain Puffin did
not hold a joker which would some time come to light. The idea of being
Mrs. Puffin was not so attractive as the other, but she occasionally
gave it her remote consideration.

Yet there was mystery about them both, in spite of the fact that most of
their movements were so amply accounted for. As a rule, they played golf
together in the morning, reposed in the afternoon, as could easily be
verified by anyone standing on a still day in the road between their
houses and listening to the loud and rhythmical breathings that fanned
the tranquil air, certainly went out to tea-parties afterwards and
played bridge till dinner-time; or if no such entertainment was
proffered them, occupied arm-chairs at the county club, or laboriously
amassed a hundred at billiards. Though tea-parties were profuse, dining
out was very rare at Tilling; Patience or a jig-saw puzzle occupied the
hour or two that intervened between domestic supper and bed-time; but
again and again, Miss Mapp had seen lights burning in the sitting-room
of those two neighbours at an hour when such lights as were still in
evidence at Tilling were strictly confined to bedrooms, and should,
indeed, have been extinguished there. And only last week, being plucked
from slumber by some unaccountable indigestion (for which she blamed a
small green apple), she had seen at no less than twelve-thirty in the
morning the lights in Captain Puffin's sitting-room still shining
through the blind. This had excited her so much that at risk of toppling
into the street, she had craned her neck from her window, and observed a
similar illumination in the house of Major Flint. They were not together
then, for in that case any prudent householder (and God knew that they
both of them scraped and saved enough, or, if He didn't know, Miss Mapp
did) would have quenched his own lights, if he were talking to his
friend in his friend's house. The next night, the pangs of indigestion
having completely vanished, she set her alarum clock at t